


Nine Million Bicycles In Beijing

by laiqualaurelote



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - The Lab, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 04:28:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laiqualaurelote/pseuds/laiqualaurelote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vincent Nigel-Murray, intrepid English DJ; his workplace, the Lab; his colleagues, all clinically insane; the love of his life, whose toothpick fixation is far from healthy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nine Million Bicycles In Beijing

_There are nine million bicycles in Beijing_   
_That’s a fact_   
_It’s a thing we can’t deny_   
_Like the fact that I will love you till I die_

Wendell obviously feels hugely guilty about not having included the lost-and-found storeroom in his previous sweep routine. He now spends an awful lot of time in there, on the offchance that there are any more Eastern-European mobsters biding their time in the coatracks so they can assassinate his lady boss. At least, that’s what he tells people. Vincent knows better.

Vincent wonders sometimes – like now, when he is lying breathless on its floor and staring up at its low, shadowed ceiling – if it is significant that they are doing this in the lost-and-found. He does not bring this up with Wendell, however; at this point, Wendell will generally be engaged in self-denial and Vincent doesn’t like to bother him when he is thus absorbed.

“Tell anybody about this,” repeats Wendell, buttoning his jacket, “and I’ll kill you.”

Vincent rolls over to retrieve his hat, which has wedged itself under a shelf of unclaimed cellphones. “You wouldn’t dare. Two dead bodies here in a month – Mr B would  _flip_.”

“Don’t be stupid, I’d dump you in the bay. Nobody’d ever find you.” Wendell begins to search his pockets distractedly. “Ah – “

Vincent finds Wendell’s toothpick jammed in the lining of his hat. “Looking for this?”

Wendell reaches out to take it. Vincent sidesteps him.

“In America, toothpicks outnumber humans by two to one,” he says, and sticks the toothpick back in the corner of Wendell’s mouth. “This sort of thing is good to know.” Then he exits the lost-and-found smartly before Wendell can make good on the above threat.

Wendell sticks his head around the door and glowers. “I  _will_  kill you.”

Vincent blows him a kiss and sets off down the corridor. “You wouldn’t dare.”

 

* * *

 

The baby is barely showing, but it’s already making Bren cranky. She snaps at Daisy half a dozen more times than she used to, which is not a big deal because everyone snaps at Daisy – but they know it’s bad when she blows up at Zack. Zack spends a whole night hiding in the cellar looking like someone wiped Halo from the face of the earth, until Bren suddenly descends upon him with an apology that borders uncharacteristically on hysterics. Which leaves Zack – and the rest of them – stupefied.

“What do you think?” says Sweets as they watch Bren stalk around the landing, trailed by an anxious Mr B. “Boy or girl? Does she look like she’s carrying high or low?”

“Carrying high or low is dependent on the woman’s body type,” states Vincent. “It’s not a reliable indicator of gender.”

Sweets gives him a look. “Do I even want to know where you pick these facts up?”

C-Synch is in the house tonight, which means Vincent hasn’t been needed for the last hour or so. The clubgoers have packed the floor around the stage to mosh, which leaves enough space at the bar for Vincent and Zack to cop a break. They’re sitting next to the kitchen window, so that Fisher can join in the conversation.

“Daisy says it’s going to be so cute,” continues Sweets happily. “Imagine – having a kid around. It’ll be wicked awesome, we’d be like its fairy godparents.”

Fisher comes to drape himself through the window and boggle at Sweets. “Uh, this is a nightclub. It’s not going to be able to legally enter the place for the next twenty-one years.”

Sweets brushes him off. “So if it’s a boy, what name?”

Vincent thinks. “The most common name in the world is Mohammed.”

“Mr B’s current number one enemy is Persian,” points out Zack. “I don’t think Mohammed is an option.”

“If you’re so keen on babies,” cuts in Angela, leaning over between Zack and Vincent, “spawn your own. But not right now, and lock the door first.” She raises her voice. “FISHER! Two towers and one wedges, Table 8!”

Fisher slopes off. “And you,” adds Angela, pointing at Sweets, “”get me a Hemingway Special, go easy on the ice.”

“Who for?” inquires Sweets, reaching for the limes.

“C’est pour moi,” snaps Angela, rolling her eyes. “I am  _dying_  on my feet out here. We’re shorthanded and you boys are just sitting here gossiping like a knitting circle.”

“We could help,” points out Zack. “I always offer to help.”

“I appreciate it, Z-man, but the guacamole incident is still fresh in my mind and believe me, we do not need another lawsuit. I’ll be back for that,” she adds in Sweets’ direction, and then heads off into the crush.

“I really can’t see the two of them agreeing on any one name,” says Vincent, picking up the trail of the conversation. “Bren will probably want an exotic name in, like, Tibetan, and with Mr B it’ll be something…really American.”

“Probably one of those unisex names,” muses Sweets, measuring out a teaspoon of maraschino liqueur. “Like Taylor. Or Piper, or Madison.”

“Madison,” says Fisher dourly, returning to the window. “What a colourless, disgusting name.”

“My sister’s name is Madison,” says Zack reproachfully.

“I’d say her life sucks,” retorts Fisher, “only I’m in the room.”

“I have always wondered what would happen if Fisher was fed valium,” remarks Zack. “I predict some sort of chemical explosion.”

C-Synch finishes his set then, and Vincent has to hurriedly down his drink and get up onstage to close for him. “Vino my man!” cries C-Synch, engaging Vincent in a complicated handshake-cum-backslap. “Dig the look. How’s it hangin’, white boy?”

“Just, ah, keeping it real,” says Vincent, attempting to keep up. “Sizzle, whoo.”

After the courtesies have been got through, C-Synch and his entourage depart for their next gig while Vincent gets back to beat juggling.

The crowd remains thick, still high on the atmosphere. Vincent fiddles with the headphones and tries to ignore the long line of underage females at the door flashing cleavage at Wendell in the hope of not getting carded. He idly wonders if playing ‘I Fell In Love With The DJ’ twice in a night might come across as unsubtle.

He and Wendell rarely talk at work.

They hang out with the others, do chores together – but they never talk, and after work they go their separate ways. The lost-and-found and the Lab are two different worlds, for all that one’s inside the other.

Vincent doesn’t complain. It’s taken him a lot of patience to get this far.

 

* * *

 

Vincent knows the story of how Wendell came to the Lab. Wendell started out with the gangbangers, and one night the gangbangers tangled with Mr B. Tangling was apparently Mr B’s favourite hobby before he met Bren; now that Bren is his favourite hobby, it exasperates her to no end when he still finds time for tangling. Vincent’s not clear on the details of what happened next, but it has to do with Wendell and Mr B and the business end of a broken beer bottle. Wendell says he would have killed Mr B, if Mr B hadn’t wrestled the bottle off him in time. Mr B didn’t kill Wendell. Could’ve, didn’t. The next day Wendell showed up on Mr B’s doorstep with a shoebag stuffed with everything he owned, and he hasn’t left since.

The Lab is full of tales like these. Vincent knows how Zack was living in the apartment below Bren when he OD’ed on Red Bull to finish his college paper, and how she was the one who took him to hospital before he slipped into full coma. He knows how the Lab hired Fisher when no other place would take him, because of his record of sticking his head in their gas ovens. That’s how Bren and Mr B work: they pick up people who fall through the cracks, dust them off, set them back on their feet. It’s a good thing the two of them own a nightclub, otherwise they wouldn’t have enough space to store all these people. And they wonder why their staff would help them get away with murder. If Vincent knows the people he works with, lying to the cops is the least of what they would do for Bren and Mr B.

Vincent’s own story is not as impressive. It’s hardly life-and-death, even. It centres on Vincent’s utter thick-headedness in allowing his wallet to be snatched on a spur-of-the-moment jaunt to the glorious capital of the US of A. Vincent chased the culprit through the doors of some shopping mall and across a park, hollering “STOP THIEF” in what was no doubt the most extended unglamorous moment of his life, until this bloke jumped on said thief out of nowhere and tackled him into a tree trunk. Pretty one-sided struggle. By the time Vincent caught up, nearly dead from the exercise, the stranger was holding out Vincent’s wallet to him.

“Think this is yours,” he said evenly, like he hadn’t just jumped a snatch-thief and knocked him senseless.

“Thank you,” gasped Vincent. “Oh god, thank you so much.” And then this terribly good-looking woman pushed past him and stood looking down at the tableau on the path. “Okay, Booth,” she said dangerously, “now what did you do?”

Booth protested his innocence, naturally, and the woman was introduced as Brennan, and then they both stood over Vincent while he counted his money – which was ten dollars, as it had always been.

“Ten dollars?” exclaimed Booth. “You chased this guy all the way from San Devo for  _ten dollars_?”

“Um, yep,” said Vincent, and then added that it was all he had left in the world except for a knapsack of clothes and his hat collection, him having come down here from the good old UK without a penny to his name.

“That,” said Brennan, “is absolutely irrational.”

“I was under the impression that American girls would dig me for my cute British accent,” said Vincent lightly, although this was not in fact what he had been thinking. He had not been thinking, period. “So much for watching Love Actually every Christmas.”

Booth rolled his eyes. Brennan said, “I don’t know what that means.”

Which was how Vincent found himself playing turntables at the Lab for a living as the first English DJ on the block. At first he figured he’d temp there till he could pay for a ticket back to Heathrow, but that night he crashed into Wendell at the door and Wendell gave him a sort of top-to-toe scan, he knows now it’s just a thing that bouncers do, but at the time it made Vincent shiver. Wendell said, “Hey, English,” and went off chewing his toothpick, while Vincent walked into a wall, the bar, and then another wall.

He talked Bren into helping him get a work visa. And then, like the rest of them, he hasn’t left since.

 

* * *

 

Hodgins claims to be writing a new novel based on the Lab. Nobody is very surprised. Hodgins, after all, practically lives in the Lab; he comes in when it opens and leaves just before Wendell does his closing sweep, and presumably spends the rest of the day sleeping, as befits a bestselling novelist. Vincent wonders when he ever finds time to write.

“It’ll be in the pulp noir style,” explains Hodgins grandiosely, as the Lab closes up around him. Vincent’s already packed up his kit and is just hanging around. “Smoking guns and mean streets – booze, broads and bullets. All that jazz.”

“Very few people realise that there is in fact very little smoke emanating from a recently fired gun,” intones Vincent. “Even if there is smoke, it’s usually from the breech and not the barrel.”

“…right,” says Hodgins. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

He is, as ever, watching Angela as she stands with her hands on her hips, debriefing the waiters. “Is Angela going to be a femme fatale, then?” says Vincent sarcastically.

“One to kill for,” agrees Hodgins admiringly.

Vincent shifts on his stool. “I always thought Cam fit the mold better.”

Cam has not been to the Lab frequently since Jared Booth walked. Jared, in a rather original move for a man simultaneously acquitted of murder and sacked from the force, declined his brother’s offer to hire him as the Lab’s new Head of Security. Instead, he decided to join Survivor: Zihuatenejo.

In response, Mr B began ageing prematurely with worry – even after Jared proved himself to be rather good at Surviving, surmounting a series of increasingly ridiculous challenges involving coconuts, jellyfish and so forth, while exercising enough of the trademark Boothian charm to avoid being voted off.

At this point in time, Jared has survived about seven Tribal Councils. Mr B remains convinced he is going to die any challenge now, but he and Bren (plus the rest of the staff) nevertheless watch Survivor religiously every week in Bren’s office. Cam displays open disapproval of these screenings. The staff suspect that she tapes them in the privacy of her home.

“Detective Saroyan is a fine figure of a woman, sure,” muses Hodgins, “but Angela? Now there’s a dame with a smile you can feel in your hip pocket.”

“You and Ange,” says Vincent critically, “accident waiting to happen.”

“Cut the jazz, man,” retorts Hodgins airily. “Don’t sweat it. I shall give you all character cameos.”

“So what am I?”

“You? You’re obviously a victim.” Hodgins downs the rest of his whiskey so that a hovering Sweets can snatch it off the bartop for washing. “Maybe you’re a spy, maybe you’re carrying an important clue, but whatever it is you’ll wind up dead in the gutter and bam! another plot point established.”

“…I don’t see where you’re coming from.”

“No, no, you’re the perfect victim!” exclaims Hodgins, warming to his subject. “You talk too much! You practically give off ‘hit me! hit me!’ vibes.”

“Are you sure you’re not missing a preposition in there?” inquires Vincent, “like ‘hit  _on_  me’ or ‘hit me  _up_ ‘ – “

“I think I’ll have Wendell kill you,” concludes Hodgins, fixing his electric blue gaze thoughtfully on Vincent. “Yes. Yes, that’s it! Wendell’s obviously the hitman, earnest young buck with a trigger finger, think Elisha Cook Jr. in ‘The Maltese Falcon’.”

“I’m not Bren or anything,” says Vincent, ” but even I don’t know what that means.”

“Scene – dark alley, heels of midnight. Slanting rain. You, terrified, been on the run for days. He’ll shoot you in the back, give you the long goodbye.” Hodgins hammers the bartop happily. “Yeah, I’ve got it! Thanks, man!”

“You’re welcome,” says Vincent darkly. If this is irony, it’s a little heavy-handed.

 

* * *

 

“According to Katie Melua,”  Vincent is telling Wendell, “there are nine million bicycles in Beijing. Although that’s highly unlikely as of the moment, since China is a statistician’s nightmare; you take your eyes off them for a second, and they’ll have added another million to whatever it is you were counting in the first place.”

In a flash Wendell has him up against the wall, one hand fisted in Vincent’s collar. Vincent grins. He is getting good at this.

“You know,” says Wendell, voice dangerously even, “you talk too much.”

Vincent pushes back, throws his weight against Wendell’s grip till he’s up in his face. “Then  _shut me up_.”

He doesn’t register anything non-tactile for the next ten minutes. Which is unfortunate, really, because in retrospect, the part where Daisy opened the door was sort of crucial.

“Oh my god,” says Daisy. “Oh. My. God.”

There is a long pause.

Wendell says: “This is not what it looks like.”

“Uh,” says Daisy, “I think I know what it looks like better than you do.”

Wendell has absolutely nothing to say to that.

There is another long pause.

Vincent elbows Wendell and reminds him in a whispered aside to put his shirt back on. “And you,” he says to Daisy, “you stop ogling.”

Daisy shuts her eyes and folds her arms, still wearing that incredible smirk that Sweets must have given her tutorials on.

“Well?” she demands, eyes still shut.

“Don’t even think about blackmail,” says Vincent sternly, “because Wendell can kill you with his little finger.”

“And Lord knows I have frequently been tempted,” supplements Wendell, straightening his jacket.

Daisy’s eyes fly open, huge and ingenuous. “Why would I ever blackmail you?” she gasps. “I love you guys!”

Wendell gives her the look he reserves for people he suspects of trying to smuggle firearms past the door.

Daisy swallows. “I will not spew the teensiest word,” she says devoutly.

“Not even to Sweets,” warns Vincent.

“I think he already knows,” says Daisy earnestly.

Vincent has absolutely nothing to say to  _that_.

Angela’s voice sounds faintly in the distance. “Daisy! DAISY! These coats are not going to hang themselves!”

“Whoops! Gotta go!” exclaims Daisy with artificial cheer, and she slips out of the door before either of them can react.

“We should have killed her,” says Wendell fatalistically.

Vincent looks at him. “You need a new coping mechanism.”

 

* * *

 

Vincent is naturally optimistic. He tells himself that it can’t be that bad, and he’s got himself convinced all evening – right up till when Angela comes bearing down on him like a sequinned hurricane with deadly intent in her eye. In ten minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world’s nuclear weapons combined. Vincent braces himself.

“Evening, Angela! Splendid top you’ve got on. Now, I’m just going to clean my kit – “

“Oh no you don’t,” says Angela simply, sweeps him up in her wake, collects a startled Wendell from the door and deposits them both in the lost-and-found, where she folds her arms and stares them down.

There is a long, uncomfortable silence. Angela drums her nails on her elbow meaningfully. Wendell attempts to blend into the panelling. Finally Vincent, exasperated by the tension, says: “Angela, we don’t do threesomes.”

Angela snaps her fingers as if that explains everything. “I just wanted to check my facts. When they come from Daisy, more often that not they’re fiction.”

“I said we should have killed her,” Wendell tells Vincent reproachfully.

Vincent eyes Angela carefully. “So, everybody knows?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” replies Angela lightly. “I mean, Daisy told just me. And Sweets, who of course said he knew it all along. While we were in the same room as Fisher and Zack. Who brought it up with Bren, because he’s her assistant and he assists her to know things, all that, and naturally what Bren knows Mr B knows. I heard them discussing it when Miss Julian came to go over the new licenses with them.”

“Oh,” says Vincent in a strained voice. “So, everybody  _and Miss Julian_  knows?”

Angela shrugs. Wendell facepalms.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, sweetie,” Angela reassures him, “nobody has a problem with it. Except for, of course, Fisher, whose soul is further blackened by the thought that more people are getting some and he isn’t one of them. The rest of us think it’s really sweet.”

Vincent, who has got the knack of seeing Wendell’s thought processes, watches as Wendell contemplates the pros and cons of killing Angela and rejects the idea as being intrinsically problematic.

“I mean,” continues Angela, “you’re cute, you’re cute, together you’re like, I don’t know,  _double-barrelled cute_. It’s all good. Although I must say I was surprised – and if you must know  _nothing_  these days surprises me. Well, you,” she points at Vincent, “I had you pegged as musical theatre when I first laid eyes on you, but Wendell? Never saw that one coming.” She tugs affectionately on Wendell’s collar. “You fooled the Angelator, baby. I’m impressed.”

Wendell manages to sputter, “I’m not gay!”

“I see,” says Angela, nodding sagely. “Vincent made you gay, right?”

Vincent covers his face with his hat.

“Awesome,” concludes Angela. “Keep it in the lost-and-found, and your approval ratings will still be above Sweets and Daisy’s. Now I’ll just take my hostessing expertise back to the professional arena. Love ya both. Room’s all yours.” She shuts the door on their horrified faces.

“Now what do we do?” demands Wendell.

“She did say that the lost-and-found’s all ours,” muses Vincent thoughtfully. “And I have a skinny tie.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,” says Wendell darkly.

“Fine by me.” Vincent starts to remove his tie. “Too much conversation going on in here, anyway.”

 

* * *

 

Angela need not have worried about a second Sweets-and-Daisy pairing around the place. Despite the fact that everybody is now throwing them knowing glances every time they’re in the same room, Wendell still doesn’t talk to Vincent at work. In fact, Vincent has suspicions that he’s being avoided.

Vincent manages to corner Wendell behind the kitchen forty minutes before they open on Friday. “You’re avoiding me.”

Wendell takes out his toothpick and stares at him. “Am not.”

“Don’t even try to – ” begins Vincent, poking him repeatedly in the chest. Wendell snatches at his wrist to make him stop. Then they both freeze as Bren and Miss Julian come round the corner, arguing about something to do with council permits. Bren ignores them. Miss Julian doesn’t stop, but she does give them a long and probing look.

“Miss Julian caught us holding hands,” says Wendell in tones of hushed shock. “It does not get any worse than this.”

“If you’re not going to do anything with it,” ventures Vincent, “I would maybe like my wrist back.”

They both look down at Vincent’s wrist, which is turning slightly blue from lack of circulation.

“Do what with it?” inquires Wendell. “Something like this?”

He yanks forward abruptly; Vincent stumbles and ends up with his nose in Wendell’s clavicle.

“Yeah,” says Wendell, “I was avoiding you.”

“I knew it!” hisses Vincent into Wendell’s collarbone.

“I’m not apologizing.”

“I could kill you.”

“Nope,” says Wendell, “that’s my line.”

“Lost-and-found?”

“Lost-and-found.”

Vincent peels himself off Wendell and they sort of power-walk down the stairs and across the club to the venue in question. Under normal circumstances Vincent might have noticed some warning signs, such as the shoe in the corridor, or the various noises from behind the door, but being around Wendell has severely eroded Vincent’s observational skills and therefore he blunders onto the sight that will haunt him to his grave, which is that of Sweets’ hand up Daisy’s skirt.

“JESUS BLOODY CHRIST!” shrieks Vincent.

“HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD!” yells Wendell.

“MY EYES!” screams Vincent, attempting to back out but only creating further gridlock.

“BRAIN!” corrects Wendell, trying to get the door open again.

Daisy untangles herself long enough to snap out, “Hel- _lo_? We were here first!”

“Oh – the door,” mumbles Sweets, who at least looks as embarrassed as Vincent feels. “Thought we locked it. Er. Heh.”

The door in question bangs open, hitting Wendell smartly on the shoulder and admitting Angela and Hodgins, apparently engaged in a professional game of tongue hockey.

“What are you doing here?” wails Sweets. He points at Hodgins. “We’re not even open for business!”

“Asked him to meet me before work,” breathes Angela. “Problem?”

Hodgins comes up for breath. “Wow, a little crowded in here.”

“ _Excuse me_?” repeats Daisy. “Do you people  _mind_?”

Angela spares her an amused glance. “Not particularly. Do you?”

The door opens again, this time to reveal Fisher.

There is a pregnant pause.

“I was going to see if anyone left my earphones here last night,” says Fisher in a strangled voice, “but right now I think it’s okay if I never see them again.”

The door, for the last time tonight, swings open ominously to frame their extremely irate employer.

“WHERE DID ALL MY STAFF GO?” thunders Mr B. “WE OPEN IN  _HALF AN HOUR_.”

His gaze travels across the room, registers exasperation at Sweets and Daisy, dismay at Vincent and Wendell, new horror at Angela and Hodgins, and confusion at Fisher.

“Don’t look at me,” says Fisher plaintively. “Wrong place, very wrong time.”

“And I thought Survivor was bad enough,” mutters Mr B to himself.

Angela props her elbow on Hodgins’ shoulder so she can raise her hand. “Permission to speak, boss.”

Mr B sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, Ange?”

“As de facto welfare officer of the Lab,” begins Angela sweetly, “can I request on the staff’s behalf that you designate a new canoodling zone?”

“A new ca –  _what_?” Mr B throws his hands up in the air in frustration. “No, Angela, you may  _not_!”

“That is so not fair,” exclaims Angela, “you and Bren have the office.”

“ _We_  have the office because  _we_  own this place!” rants Mr B. “I pay a  _mortgage_ for it! Whereas you are my  _staff_! I give you  _off days_! Will you people start _putting_  your off days to  _good_  use and  _stop_  getting sexed during  _working hours_!”

Everyone in the room has the grace to look sheepish. Even Fisher.

“That clear?” finishes Mr B.

“Yes, boss.”

“Great.” Mr B opens the door and gestures for them to exit. “We open in twenty minutes. Now, OUT!”

 

* * *

 

“Oh my god,” says the girl with the piercing, “are you, like, English?”

“That is correct,” replies Vincent, focussing on the equaliser.

The two girls giggle. “Oh my god, that is so cute!” exclaims the one with the streaky blonde hair. “London, right?”

“Birmingham, actually.” Vincent forces a smile at them. He gets this a lot, girls coming up to his station trying to pull a Che’Nelle, and normally he plays along. Then again, normally they don’t get into his space as much as this two. “So – night out with the boyfriends?”

“Oh, nah.” The blonde, whose name may or may not be Ashley, flaps her hand dismissively and then lowers her voice meaningfully. “We’re here alone.”

“Well,” says Vincent, “technically you’re not alone because there are two of you.”

This throws them for a bit, but to give them credit they recover very quickly. “Can we buy you a drink?”

Vincent sneaks a look across the club at the entrance, where Wendell is on duty. As predicted, Wendell is watching him with narrowed eyes. “You’re refreshingly straightforward,” says Vincent to maybe-Ashley, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse. I’m on the job, see.”

“Maybe we can buy you one after,” she purrs.

Vincent sighs. “I’m not playing your CD, Ashley.”

“It’s Asha,” she says, and then pauses. “Excuse me, what?”

“You’re trying to sleep with me so I’ll play your CD, raise your profile,” points out Vincent. “I may be English but I’m not fresh off the boat.”

“You haven’t even heard my music,” protests Asha, fiddling with her necklace in a way that is no doubt meant to draw his attention to her cleavage. Vincent glances at the entrance again, catches Wendell scowling openly and allows himself a grin.

“Sorry,” he tells her, “club policy. Plus, personally I’m not sure I’d want to. Why don’t you hit the floor?”

“Fuck you,” says Asha with impressive bluntness.

“As I said, refreshingly straightforward.” Vincent puts his headphones on. “If you don’t mind?”

Asha looks like she’d like to spit on him, but instead she grabs her friend and they both disappear into the crush on the floor. Vincent checks on Wendell, who angles his toothpick in the girls’ direction and raises a demanding eyebrow. Vincent shrugs expressively and grabs the live mic.

“And here’s some Beyonce for all you single ladies on the floor tonight.” He looks pointedly at the club entrance. “If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it.”

Wendell glances around carefully to see if anyone is looking, then – true to form – draws a finger across his throat.

Vincent waits for ‘Single Ladies’ to play itself out, then cross-fades into ‘Mercy’.

Wendell rolls his eyes.

Vincent decides to change tack. Wendell raises both his eyebrows as ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ comes on the speakers.

“I thought we agreed that Sixties Night was Wednesday?” shouts Mr B over the Rolling Stones’ griping, as he walks past carrying a new crate of beer.

“Sorry boss!” Vincent calls back. “Sudden strange fancy!”

Mr B edges closer to the station. “Is something up? Your music’s all over the place tonight.”

“It’s nothing,” says Vincent serenely. “Everything’s, oh, groovy.”

“Just so long you don’t play anything from the Rocky Horror Picture Show again.” Mr B goes on his way, still regarding Vincent with suspicion. Vincent decides to return to last decade and blends off into ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’. At the door, Wendell rolls his eyes.

“The two of you,” says Angela indulgently as she walks past in the opposite direction. “It’s like phone sex, but with the rest of the floor listening in.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” replies Vincent impassively.

“Do not play the innocent with me, Mr Nigel-Murray!” shouts Angela, heading to the entrance to field the next party of customers, and presumably call Wendell out on the same issue while she’s at it.

“Can’t read my poker face!” retorts Vincent, lining Lady GaGa up for the next track as a warning.

 

* * *

 

Vincent doesn’t see Asha in the club again till the actual Sixties night. He is halfway through ‘Whole Lotta Love’ when she shows up, lip set mutinously. She appears to have traded in the friend with a piercing for a tall bloke with a crew cut. Vincent has to raise his voice to be heard over the wailing of Jimmy Page’s guitar. “I said, I can’t play your CD!”

Asha nods towards him. “That’s the one,” she says to the man with her.

The man looks Vincent over, then leans over the table and says upfront, “If you touch my girlfriend again I’ll kill you.”

Vincent puts his hands up and backs out from the table. If there’s going to be an altercation – and an altercation seems to be on the menu – he’d rather his equipment stay out of it. “Look, she’s got to go through other channels, all right? If you want to talk to the manager – “

The man advances on him. “Don’t think that just ’cause you’re the DJ you can feel up my girl.”

“I’ve been saying – oh, wait.” The words register in Vincent’s brain. “I did not – oh, Asha, that is  _extreme_.”

Asha folds her arms. “Paul, he’s trying to deny it,” she says, and her voice is shrill and wobbly. “I said he would.”

“O-kay,” says Vincent. “We have reached, uh, a colossal misunderstanding – “

Paul socks him in the jaw.

Vincent has not spent much of his life being beaten up. He has been mugged twice and locked, a very long time ago, in his school locker, but so far he’s succeeded in evading actual physical injury. He’s glad of that, because it turns out that actual physical injury is seriously, seriously not to be messed with.

He hits the wall face-first and slides down it. He remembers to get his elbows up, but not quickly enough to block the incoming knee to the ribs. Vincent keels over. Fate seems to have sadistically timed this bit in slow motion so that every second hurts longer. Then he’s on the floor, and Paul is throttling him.

Vincent blacks out for a couple of beats, and then the pressure comes off his throat. Vincent opens his eyes in time to see Wendell throw Paul bodily into the wall. As Paul stumbles, trying to get his balance, Wendell hauls back and really slugs him one below the ear. Paul totters, then collapses over Vincent.

Wendell reaches out to grab Asha, who is trying to escape into the crowd. Asha stomps on his foot with her six-inch heel and slips out of his grasp, at which point she is abruptly dropped by a knifehand strike to the neck by Daisy.

“Oh my god, it actually worked!” squeals Daisy, looking at her hand in delight. “I told Lance that aikido classes were a good idea!” She jabs a groaning Asha with one kitten heel. “And just so you know, he would not have been interested in you in a million years! Slag,” she adds with a measure of self-satisfaction.

Wendell rolls an unconscious Paul off Vincent and kneels down next to him, checking for damage. “How’d you cross the room so fast?” mumbles Vincent.

“I flew,” says Wendell matter-of-factly. “Anything broken?”

“No, but my jaw feels like someone tried to drill it for oil.”

“Up you get,” mutters Wendell, hauling him onto his feet. Vincent tips to the side as his legs buckle. Wendell props him up against the wall so he can sling Vincent’s arm around his shoulder. “We’re going to the office.”

“What about the music?” objects Vincent, waving feebly. “Someone has to watch the music.”

“Forget the music, we’ll get Sweets to improvise something. Watch these two till the boss gets here,” adds Wendell to Daisy. “Cam’s in the house somewhere, get her over here too.” Then they’re forcing their way through the gathering ring of spectators. Vincent keeps stumbling. “The room’s going crazy,” he informs Wendell.

“It happens,” replies Wendell through gritted teeth, pulling Vincent up the stairs. “Try to focus.” Then: “You didn’t really feel up his girlfriend, did you?”

“I cannot see straight,” laments Vincent, “this is really not the time.”

Wendell looks down at him. At least, Vincent thinks that’s where Wendell is looking, because at this point his vision isn’t exactly a primary source. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“Didn’t I? Of course I didn’t. Feel her up.” Vincent coughs, puts his free hand up to his mouth, takes it away and stares. “Is that blood on my hand?”

Wendell looks down at it. “Yeah.”

“Haha! Blood!” says Vincent. And then: “Whoa, am I  _bleeding_?”

“Hold on, we’re almost there,” says Wendell.

“I have internal bleeding,” babbles Vincent. “I’m haemorrhaging. Did I pronounce that correctly?”

“It’s just your split lip.”

“Oh my god,” says Vincent suddenly, “you’re jealous!”

Wendell stops. Vincent realises that they’re standing in Bren’s office, and Bren is holding a first-aid kit and staring at them in confusion.

“He’s really not okay,” Wendell tells her by way of explanation.

They prop Vincent on the sofa. “Nothing broken,” says Bren, handling his jaw with the delicacy of a professional. “He’s going to bruise up spectacularly, though. I’ll just stitch this one up, it’ll save you the trip to the hospital.”

“That’s lovely,” says Vincent. “Wait – what do you mean, stitch?”

“On your eyebrow. It’s just one stitch,” adds Bren soothingly, “to make sure it doesn’t scar.”

“Is that, like, really necessary?” says Vincent nervously. “I can live with a scar. It’ll be just like – like Harry Potter!”

“There is absolutely nothing to be concerned about,” says Bren. “I was in training to be a nurse, I know my subcuticular from my corner stitch. Relax.”

“Yeah,” supplements Wendell. “Once I had seven stitches done on my left shoulder. I was awake the whole time. I don’t think they even sterilised the needle.”

“It’s only one stitch,” repeats Bren. “A tiny stitch.”

“I don’t mind if it scars!” persists Vincent frantically. He spots Wendell moving round the sofa and latches onto him. “You’re not going to stop liking me if I’m not pretty, are you?”

“Don’t be such a girl,” says Wendell in long-suffering tones.

“I resent that, Wendell,” points out Bren, pulling out alcohol wipes.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“You  _do_ just like me because I’m pretty!” shouts Vincent in dismay.

Bren swabs the cut with alcohol. Vincent flinches and attempts to climb off the other end of the sofa, but Wendell holds him down. Wendell puts his mouth next to Vincent’s ear and says: “It is impossible to lick your elbow.”

“What?” says Vincent, distracted. “I knew that.”

“You do? Damn.” Vincent’s eyes are drawn back to Bren, who is ripping open a packet to reveal the most terrifying needle Vincent has ever seen in his life, a length of catgut trailing ominously from one end. Wendell says, hurriedly: “Non-dairy creamer is flammable. A cockroach can live for several weeks without its head. In Rhodes Island, it is illegal to throw pickle juice at a trolley.”

“I kn – what, really?” Bren pushes the needle in. “FUCK!” says Vincent.

When he next comes to, Bren is applying dressing to the wound. “Make sure he doesn’t scratch it,” she orders Wendell. “I’m going down to see if Booth needs help with hauling people down to the police station.”

She leaves. Wendell sits down on the floor with his back against the couch arm. Vincent simply lies there, pain and shock still radiating through his head.

“Did you learn all that just so you could tell me under the right circumstances?” says Vincent eventually.

Wendell shifts uncomfortably. “Thought it might come in useful.”

“Thank you,” says Vincent.

Wendell clears his throat to indicate that the matter is closed and no longer bears speaking of.

Vincent shuts his eyes. The pain is growing less sharp, a duller throbbing hurt just concentrated around his eyebrow and no longer his entire frontal lobe. Wendell reaches up, absently brushing a thumb over Vincent’s bottom lip, ghosting over the place where the cut is still fresh.

“I don’t just like you because you’re pretty,” says Wendell after some time.

“I  _am_  still pretty, right?”

“Yeah.” Wendell laughs softly to himself. “Kinda.”

“I knew that,” says Vincent with quiet triumph.

 

* * *

 

And that was more or less the whole matter, except for a few jaunts down to the police station and the argument between Bren and Mr B.

“You stitched Vincent up? In your office?”

“I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” says Bren.

“You’re pregnant!” explodes Mr B.

“That is fallacious,” counters Bren. “That has nothing to do with my surgical precision.”

Mr B retreats. “Whatever it is, you can’t go around stitching up employees like that!”

“Why not? I was in training to be a nurse before I met you!”

“You never graduated!”

“I am so glad,” says Vincent from the sofa, “that we are having this conversation  _after_  my operation.”

“I still have to take the stitch out,” confesses Bren.

Vincent lives. Nobody else is particularly sympathetic towards his traumatic experience, especially not his ex-gangster not-boyfriend.

“He beat somebody up for you,” points out Zack. “I’ve been told that is a good sign.”

“I think he thinks I’m, like, a girl,” laments Vincent. “At least, that must be how he explains it to himself.”

Zack squints at him. “I’m unable to refute that conjecture.”

“Why am I even talking to you about this?” sighs Vincent. “Of all people?”

“I have no idea,” says Zack honestly. “I wanted to go home, but you wouldn’t stop.”

Vincent opens his mouth to reply, then checks himself. “ _Thank_  you,” finishes Zack, and walks off.

Vincent leans on the railing and fans himself weakly with his hat. It is three in the morning and the Lab is nearly empty, with the exception of the light on in Bren’s office that shows she’s doing accounts, and the movement of Wendell’s flashlight below as he conducts his pre-lockup sweep. Vincent is not remotely tired, but he figures he might as well go home and spend another insomnia-riddled morning reading his landlady’s old Reader’s Digests.

On his way out he passes Wendell, who looks up from where he is checking the bar area. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” returns Vincent, heading for the door.

Wendell puts his flashlight on the bartop and says: “Where do you think you’re going?”

Vincent turns around and stares at him, open-mouthed.

“Fifteen minutes,” says Wendell. “I still have to do the cellar.”

Fifteen minutes later, they’ve left the Lab. The streets have the magic emptiness that comes with the very early morning. “Where are we going?” asks Vincent.

“Why do you always need to know everything?” says Wendell. “ _I_  don’t.”

He doesn’t sound too annoyed, though, so Vincent just waits. After they’ve turned the corner, Wendell remarks: “Apparently 98% of statistics are made up on the spot.”

“43.8%, actually, is the more commonly referenced number.”

“You made that up.”

“You break my heart.”

Wendell grins. “Any day.”

A few blocks later, he adds: “I don’t know where we’re going.”

“I don’t really care,” says Vincent, “about not knowing.”

Wendell looks down at him, and smiles.

“Good to know.”


End file.
